Work Record 5

Fifth record of photographs

Planning
Shoot Ideas

In my final shoot prior to the exam I am planning to base it off of Thomas Leth-Olsen's style of photography, a high contrast urban feel, linking to the other two I've been researching the past weeks. I will be heading out with the intent to find more closeups of curves, with more metallic or industrial looks to them.

Image Bank
Inspiring Images

Contact Sheet
All Photos Taken

5 Best Photos
The Top 5 for Final Piece

2 Photos to Improve
The 2 that Failed to Reach the Requirements

The selected photos are all from the most recent shoot taken for the unit, and I believe they all accurately represent what the unit is based upon. For example, the first of the five photos shows a rather gritty photo from a bike rack by the library in town. I like the photo because of how it captures a snippet of the area, focusing on this specific curve which can be seen inside of the image. The rest of the photos have extremely similar focal points of railings. However, I'd like to talk in more detail on only a few. The third image is quite interesting, and is ironically the only non-handrail photo I've chosen. The photo is taken of a tree pot inside town, and captures the edge of it. Along with this however, it also captures the background which pictures a bench and the flooring. This gives a lot of depth to the photo as well as more context on where the photo is located in relation to the ground, etc. Onto the 5th photo (my favourite), it's very good in the way that it mixes the gritty texture of the wall with the extremely smooth handrail. Furthermore, It uses each of the connectors as focal points of the photo, which gives the idea of a 3 dimensional photo. Furthermore, the shadow also hits in the perfect place below the railing, giving depth to the photo. 

The two worst photos show two different fixtures inside the town centre, with the former being a cigarette disposal container and latter being a drainage cover. The first is flawed due to a variety of reasons, one being the area it was taken and another being the fact that there wasn't an easy way to get close enough. The second photo of the drainage cover didn't work because of how it barely captures it, and just looks a bit dirty rather than actually gritty or industrial, its not aesthetically pleasing and doesn't give any depth or composition.

Potential Ideas & Experiments
Exploring new Ideas

I believe there are some clever experiments I will be able to partake in to improve the photos beyond what they originally stood as. However, this will be complicated as the photos are not very versatile in the way I want them to be. My aim is to begin by burning and dodging each photo, and then do something I like to call select saturation. Select saturation is a concise term I've came up with for when one makes an image black and white, and then changes specific areas to be in saturation. For example, a photographer takes a photo of a field with a tree in it. In post, he makes it B/W and removes the filter on the tree only, making the tree in colour while the rest out of colour.

References
Photos to Link to Ideas & Experiments

Camera Settings
How I took the photos

Using my Canon 1100D, I took these photos using IOS 400 through 3200, and aperture of f4/f7.1, and a shutter speed of 1/100 to 1/1000. I primarily focused on trying to take macro shots, however some required less of a macro setting, hence the versatility and ambiguity of the settings. When taking the photos, my main focus was on the aperture as well as a bit of the shutter speed. I wanted photos where the thing I was focusing on was the only thing in focus, to make the viewers look at that.

Edits
How I Edited them in Post

To edit them, I began by using Camera RAW via opening the .RAW files in Photoshop. To reach my goal, I began by creating very high exposure high contrast photos, along with very contrasting highlights and shadows. Then, I increased both the clarity and amount of dehazing to my liking. This is because some of the photos were quite soft or slightly out of focus. Doing this can remove that and make it 
much more raw and sharp.


Once I finished with that, I opened my spot healing tool, and removed any areas of my image which had spots, blemishes or marks on the camera or the object in focus. To do this all I had to do was brush over the wanted area and the computer creates a representation of what it thinks best fits in that area. Sometimes it doesn't work, but if you get it in the right place it fixes it.
After that, finally I went through the adjustments once more to get the perfect possible photo. I changed around with the exposure via curves, and I made sure it was in B/W. After that I saved and exited.





Final Piece
Final Photos and Future Improvement